Discussion of session 3 readings: Rodríguez 2019 & Stinson 2018

[gabrielbodard]

Please discuss the two following papers in this thread:

• Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega. 2019. "Canon, Value, and Cultural Heritage: New Processes of Assigning Value in the Postdigital Realm." Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2.2, 25. Available: https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/2/2/25
• Alexander Stinson, Sandra Fauconnier & Liam Wyatt. 2018. “Stepping Beyond Libraries: The Changing Orientation in Global GLAM-Wiki.” JLIS.it 9.3, 16–34. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.4403/jlis.it-12480

As usual, keep in mind questions such as provenance and context of the papers/authors; relevance for discussion of this week's topic and exercise; relationship to other things you know or have read about in classics/heritage studies; anything else that occurs to you when reading the papers.

[Kiamanx]

Canon, Value, and Cultural Heritage: New Processes of Assigning Value in the Postdigital Realm - Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega

Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega is a faculty member of the Art History department at the University of Malaga. Her main areas of study are the digital preservation of Art History and the uses and possibilities of the digitized artistic medium, as well as digital humanities in general.

This paper in particular concerns the canon of cultural heritage in the postdigital age.
Whilst "canon" has a multitude of meanings, in this text canon is the generally accepted ideas of a field that serve as the "criterion of authority" within said medium. Generally accepted theories, practices and decorum in the field are considered the necessary factors for an established canon.
Postdigital is a new term that postulates the end of the digital revolution in favour of an emerging human comfort with a digitally focused life in which we currently live.

"the dissemination of dataism as new religion"

- Introduction
With the naturalisation of the digital in the modern world, accessibility to software and diffusion of cultural information has become the status quo. This new paradigm has major implications for the field of humanities, with sites and open databases being the new norm and placing the old canon into question. Rodríguez-Ortega places the dynamics of these changes into a triad: hypercanonization, socialdecanonization, and transcanonization, all three acting to reassume the field of cultural heritage.

- Defining Hypercanonization
The idea of "hypercanonization" is defined here as the traditional canon being retrofitted into the postdigital era. Whilst the canon of cultural heritage was before defined as accepted practices from those at the top of the field, hypercanonization maintains the status quo but also increases the prominence of these practices to a global audience. The scale of the information spread increasing exponentially begs the question as to who now controls the canon and what the future may hold.

The UNESCO World Digital Library is used as an example of a new digital authority through its meta-archive, an archive within an archive. Europeana is used as a different example, this one of building a distinctly European identity in digital cultural heritage.

Endorsed, promoted, and developed by metanational organizations as part of their long-term strategic policies, they can be thought as a translation of the traditional cultural institutions (archives, libraries, museums, etc.) for the digital world.
Europeana thus carries out a process of “appropriation” of cultural legacies coming from the diversity of European territories, all of which fall under Europeana’s political decisions. These decisions comprise codification and representation standards, technological frameworks, intellectual property rights, and prioritization of actions in relation to the digitized cultural heritage.

Problems with hypercanonization are addressed, both of these are political organisations from developed nations. The information still lies with those that have the technological capability.

- Defining Social Decanonization
Social Decanonization is the antithesis of Hypercanonization, as it refers to the empowerment of the public in regard to the established cultural canon and their collective ability to determine rules and meanings to cultural legacies. Instead of cultural canons being kept through the actions of a powerful few, the postdigital age has allowed for a dehierarchization of the canon through egalitarian data preservation.

These sorts of bottom-up social practices give rise to a new cultural axiology where not only social memory, subjectivity, emotionality, and affectivity but also dissension, resistance, criticism, demystification, etc., become crucial factors in the resemantization of cultural objects and their relocation in new scales of value, while communal validation replaces institutional authority as a means of legitimacy.

Sites like Wikipedia have swiftly become the primary database for the storage of information. Due to easy accessibility, the user-governed database has dethroned the traditional encyclopaedia for years. The ramifications for this have not yet been fully realised, but Rodriguez-Ortega has a positive outlook.

between the richness embodied in the creative and innovative capacity of individuals and communities to give new meanings to objects that are part of our cultural heritage, and pure ochlocracy, global ignorance, emptiness, and banality.

- Defining Transcanonization
The convergence of the previous dynamics is known here as Transcanonization. Both institutions and individuals converge to determine the dynamics in reforming traditional canons. "Negotiated Institutionalism" is what the process is known as, and it utilises the social power of the web to form a new truth.
The previously mentioned Europeana is seen to have incorporated Transcanonization into its own statement, where it claims:

“As a community we need to increase participation making our cultural heritage personal and relatable by connecting family stories and memories to major shared cultural themes."
But this concept does present problems, namely the uncoordinated nature of these practices. The question of intellectual property becomes crucial and with both parties acting on their own it seems that this synchronisation is a long way from being perfected. To get this concept to work, full transparency is required in order for natural coordination of the cultural valuation process to occur.

- Conclusion
The future of these concepts is still uncertain. The lines dividing power relations in academic canons are becoming more blurred as the years go on. The internet is no longer a novel concept, and while we may be in the halcyon days of the postdigital, it is not an old one either. We are in the middle of the digital transition of information, and while the old institutions may exist, rapid and capricious circumstances for the switch in authority may soon present themselves. To avoid this communication breakdown, the old institutions must begin to fully adapt to the new egalitarian methods that the internet has created; that anyone can edit a Wikipedia article or that admins can choose to remove certain information. Cultural heritage is transitioning to this new digital form, but its future is still uncertain.

The objective of this paper has not been to establish closed conclusions on these questions, but rather to propose an open reflection about the problems and challenges facing us.

This was a long one, but it had so many excellent concepts that I wasn't able to include in the final summary. Overall, a very complex paper that explores far more than just digital humanities concepts, but implications for the internet at large.

(Apologies in advance for the little YouTube video there, I wasn't sure if it was appropriate, but it tackles the postdigital fears of cultural continuity quite well. All predicted in 2002.)

[K-Doering]

Alexander Stinson, Sandra Fauconnier & Liam Wyatt. 2018. “Stepping Beyond Libraries: The Changing Orientation in Global GLAM-Wiki.” JLIS.it 9.3, 16–34.

Stinson's article is on the topic of the changing relationships between GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) and Wikimedia communities.

In the beginning of this relationship, the focus was to batch uploads of digital content onto Wikimedia platforms but has since evolved into two major trends:

1. Facilitating linked open data with Wikidata
2. The expansion of GLAM-Wiki projects to support a wide variety of institutions, from those who have large digital capacity and funding to those with limited resources, collections focused on marginalized knowledge, and collections in parts of the world with limited digital expertise.

To realize the goal of Wikimedia projects, the movement identified two key priorities:

1. 'Knowledge as service' - the use of knowledge platforms in a variety of social contexts and formats
2. 'Knowledge equity' - members of diverse communities can see their knowledge reflected in projects.

GLAMs were identified as sharing the same objective as the Wikimedia projects: to ensure that accurate and support knowledge is accessible to the public.

Through a volunteer 'Wikipedian in Residence' position at the British Museum, Wyatt demonstrated how the relationship between the two entities could be mutually beneficial -- demonstrating how quality, quantity, and reliability of information could all be increased through partnership. There was tension between professionals and the perceived anti-experts of Wikimedia. Strategies of the project included utilizing the existing Wikipedia community and the development of proper training and tools.

The three overall tactics of GLAM-Wiki were: the Wikipedian in Residence model; batch uploads to Wikimedia Commons; and editing events. Through the increase of Wikipedian residencies, the project was able to focus on issues (such as funding/conflicts of interest) and the understanding of much needed flexibility between institutions and the editors (there is no one-size-fits-all role that the editor fills).

Building these more formal relationships with institutions forced longer-term thinking and relationship building but also brought up issues of resources and scale.

Recent trends, many in the last five years, include the following core activities:

1. Sustainable partnerships (through resources and projects)
2. New technological opportunities
3. Investing in equity and support for 'emerging' and previously marginalized communities and their unique challenges (e.g. practical challenge of transporting equipment between islands in Indonesia)

The principal platform for sharing data in the Wikimedia community is a via Wikidata, a language-independent, linked, open, and structured database. The unique ability of Wikidata is that it allows communication between a variety of languages and projects.

• Major opportunities include: improving tagging, greater representation of heritage objects, tool/software development, and connection to authoritative authorship. e.g. Women in Red.
• Major challenges include: ensuring consistent tools, sustainability, professional knowledge, and integration.
  --
  It was interesting to read about the development of collaboration between the Wikipedia community and GLAMs. As discussed in the lecture, and a bit in last week's discussion, there is undeniable value added when diverse voices are included and there is an investment made in providing tools to historically marginalized communities so that they too have the opportunity to contribute to the rich hub that is Wikimedia. All of this being said, I would be in interested in discussing the supposed issue of most information being created (and I am sure also consumed) by the West -- although diverse contributions are valuable does the lack of their presence de-value the quality of contributions of cisgender, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males? I don't necessarily think the identity of the editor has an inherent effect on the factual validity of the topic they are writing about but would be interested in everyone's thoughts on knowledge equity in concept.

[FabioDFernandes]

Thank you Kiarash and Kéyah for your super detailed summaries of these two papers! They were really excellent and certainly helped me process these heftier articles.

On Rodríguez-Ortega - I found these concepts regarding canonisation a really enlightening way of tracing the increasing digitalisation (and in consequence, democratisation, I suppose you could say) of cultural heritage. Perhaps, 'transcanonisation' is the healthiest compromise between the others, in that cultural heritage does not remain merely the realm of traditional cultural institutions, but also in that cultural authorities can still ensure a prevailing of truth in more niche areas of cultural heritage that are less open to fluid interpretations - 'negotiated institutionalism', she calls it. The concept of 'social decanonisation' instantly brought to mind our discussion last week on the value of personal memories and subjectivity in community mapping of local heritage - as suggested here, this plays a strong role in many forms of cultural heritage. So, whilst it might be more (arguably, of course) appropriate for a cultural institution to retain a degree of authority over the digital dissemination/interpretation over something as niche as Roman pottery (that's just my own random example), the example she gave of the Brazilian village of Garapuá - where the inhabitants 'participated communally in a redefinition of their own cultural identity, exploring by themselves the key concepts underlying their common territory, history, and traditions through the production of collaborative digital narratives and storytelling' - is already an area much more deserving of such democratisation. 'Cultural heritage' is so extremely diverse, so there have to be lots of different approaches to different aspects of it.

I guess, like you said Kiarash, Wikipedia has dethroned the traditional encyclopaedia. Whilst this perhaps is an example of social decanonisation, I wonder if we could bracket it into transcanonisation? It certainly is very open (anyone can contribute after all, even abuse it), but it is quite regulated - I'm just waiting to see anyone edit or criticise my posts. And as suggested in the lecture, Wikipedia contributors are called editors, not authors - they are not meant to be 'creating' information per se, but gathering it and making it accessible. So, they are still not being held up to the same standard/authority as any being/institution in the more elite traditional canon, but at least conceptually, it is just as valuable. Indeed, one of the main problems in areas such as academia is the amount of knowledge that is never democratised and never travels beyond that realm. Sorry, that was my stream of consciousness, but I hope that was a clear contribution on my part.

[FabioDFernandes]

It was interesting to read about the development of collaboration between the Wikipedia community and GLAMs. As discussed in the lecture, and a bit in last week's discussion, there is undeniable value added when diverse voices are included and there is an investment made in providing tools to historically marginalized communities so that they too have the opportunity to contribute to the rich hub that is Wikimedia. All of this being said, I would be in interested in discussing the supposed issue of most information being created (and I am sure also consumed) by the West -- although diverse contributions are valuable does the lack of their presence de-value the quality of contributions of cisgender, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males? I don't necessarily think the identity of the editor has an inherent effect on the factual validity of the topic they are writing about but would be interested in everyone's thoughts on knowledge equity in concept.

On Stinson, Fauconnier, Wyatt - I thought it was really interesting to learn that the British Museum had a a 'Wikipedian in Residence'. That there was tension between the professionals and 'perceived anti-experts' was interesting to learn too, and this very much plays into what the other article discusses regarding canons. It is certainly a good thing if GLAM institutions can contribute to Wikimedia, where their specific expertise allows them to do so. That would only serve to create a more trustworthy and richer distribution of knowledge. But also, they should use their influence and cultural authority to facilitate the voices of such marginalised communities.

I would agree, Kéyah, that the identity of the editor might not necessarily have an inherent effect on the factual validity of the topic they are writing about and certainly does not devalue it - if it is something where it is hard to be subjective, such as regurgitating basic fact. But, I suppose, perspectives driven by different cultural experiences and realities (as vague as that sounds) play a role in certain topics. There definitely is a notable Anglo-Saxon domination on Wikipedia. You just have to look at the number of English language pages and the length of pages of Anglosphere cities/countries/figures or areas where they are dominant academically - in contrast with other languages, especially those that are not globally spoken western languages. This is probably a more innocent reflection of the fact that Wikimedia is American after all, and English is the global lingua franca - though I found the figures on female contribution truly appalling.

So, I would think an expansion of Wikipedia contributors well outside the Anglosphere and West to reflect the diversity of voices globally is imperative. An editor based in London or Texas could write up a very factual and objective article on Shanghai or Beirut, but the perspective of a Shanghainese or Beiruti on their own cities would be so much more valuable on many fundamental levels. Like we discussed in community mapping, personal and emotional experience is an integral part of how we approach cultural heritage. And an Indian or Moroccan history editor might have a certain cultural approach to their own countries histories that a Western editor simply might not (due to potentially ingrained biases or less sinister misconceptions of cultural differences). Certainly, an important challenge for Wikimedia is to encourage a more diverse and global range of editors to contribute and thus to democratise information more globally too.

[RebeccaKimberlin]

Thank you both your summaries! Linked slightly to the question of editor identity, but more to 'transcanonisation' - I found Ortega's note on how various mechanisms designed to facilitate decanonisation were destabilised by interventions from the "legitimised" institutions (in the case of Centre Pompidou) really interesting + thought-provoking, especially with our discussion of private/public responses to heritage last week! @FabioDFernandes I definitely agree that certain cultural objects/history might require more niche knowledge and therefore 'authority' online, I wonder how this can be balanced with connecting heritage to people? As in the example of Centre Pompidou, by removing users' spontaneity in adding tags to content, the personal, and individual, side to heritage was taken away. I think this case particularly shows an element of performative 'social decanonisation,' and a need to consider why public responses are relevant and desirable in cultural heritage - especially when digitisation carried out with cultural institutions may make them seem less 'elite' or distanced. What do you think?

[ChantalvanEgdom]

Thank you for the summaries, they were very helpful! @RebeccaKimberlin , I was wondering something along the same lines for Rodríguez-Ortega's article, namely if the main prerequisite for how authority is to be estalbished in this new, more open way, that access seems to be playing a major part in that (similarly as was discussed in the lecture) and through that it seems to me that quantity may endanger the good intentions of this method (as in, who has the capacity to assign values being determined by the voices that can be heard best due to better access).

[FabioDFernandes]

@RebeccaKimberlin A good point! I do also agree that the practice of tagging in the Pompidou case must have served to reduce the spontaneity of users. As the tagger had 'to comply with words previously systematized in an established thesaurus', it would seem as though they were more concerned in offering a curated and limited set of interpretations and perspectives rather than allowing users to offer their complete own - and in the case of art, art is famously subjective. And that is definitely not what I would call free social tagging (according to the definition Ortega offers). So, in this case it is interesting to see how they have carried out a process of 'social decanonisation' ('performative' was a good word to use), but the limit they applied on the taggers is still restrictive in offering space for the creativity of users and is not a completely honest interaction with public response.

[ChantalvanEgdom]

On Stinson's article, I really like the idea of a Wikipedian in residence and the formal relations with institutions and it's a great step into the direction for more evenly spread reliability, but do agree with Fabio that diversity and insider perspectives are incredibly valuable and important. I do get the impression that the GLAM-Wiki project seems to be moving into that direction, even though the work in that department is obviously far from done. Very enlightening article overall!

[despinaborcea]

Thank you Kiarash and Keyah for your excellent summaries!
As a quick note building on Fabio’s observation – whilst I agree that Wikipedia edits could fit under the umbrella of transcanonization, I also think they could easily slip into hypercanonization or social decanonization. For example, some pages are watched by more editors than others (some topics are more popular/sensitive/etc than others), meaning this increases the likelihood of post-edit corrections; in short, some pages could be more scrutinised than others, which begs the question, by whom? I think this also ties in with the question of reliability for less edited pages or excessively modified ones: the editors could be experts in the field or not. This comment is not meant to denigrate Wikipedia – it remains an accessible and informative digital tool, but more of an observation built on the agreement with Rebecca’s point- the Rodríguez-Ortega article is definitely a thought-provoking read!

[FabioDFernandes]

Thank you Kiarash and Keyah for your excellent summaries!
As a quick note building on Fabio’s observation – whilst I agree that Wikipedia edits could fit under the umbrella of transcanonization, I also think they could easily slip into hypercanonization or social decanonization. For example, some pages are watched by more editors than others (some topics are more popular/sensitive/etc than others), meaning this increases the likelihood of post-edit corrections; in short, some pages could be more scrutinised than others, which begs the question, by whom? I think this also ties in with the question of reliability for less edited pages or excessively modified ones: the editors could be experts in the field or not. This comment is not meant to denigrate Wikipedia – it remains an accessible and informative digital tool, but more of an observation built on the agreement with Rebecca’s point- the Rodríguez-Ortega article is definitely a thought-provoking read!

Very good point Despina! I agree with you - especially where a page/genre might be monopolised by a series of editors who hold influence over how it is edited, it can certainly fit into a form of hypercanonisation. And social decanonisation too, in that, as you mention, some less edited pages are basically left to the will of whoever gets to it (which can be both good and bad depending on the aims/veracity of the editor).

[K-Doering]

For example, some pages are watched by more editors than others (some topics are more popular/sensitive/etc than others), meaning this increases the likelihood of post-edit corrections; in short, some pages could be more scrutinised than others, which begs the question, by whom? I think this also ties in with the question of reliability for less edited pages or excessively modified ones: the editors could be experts in the field or not. This comment is not meant to denigrate Wikipedia – it remains an accessible and informative digital tool, but more of an observation built on the agreement with Rebecca’s point- the Rodríguez-Ortega article is definitely a thought-provoking read!

Very good point Despina! I agree with you - especially where a page/genre might be monopolised by a series of editors who hold influence over how it is edited, it can certainly fit into a form of hypercanonisation. And social decanonisation too, in that, as you mention, some less edited pages are basically left to the will of whoever gets to it (which can be both good and bad depending on the aims/veracity of the editor).

Thanks to you both for your insights. This was a concern I was thinking about a few days ago when my changes were reverted -- there is already an unseen hierarchy built into Wikipedia. Instead of the "currency" of degrees and career experience, those who have been editing for years and have dozens of badges are now the editing gatekeepers and feel they have authority to revert edits by emerging editors if they are not adding "value" in their own, single opinion, thus maintaining a hierarchy and further hypercanonizing information.

[Kiamanx]

I was thinking about a few days ago when my changes were reverted -- there is already an unseen hierarchy built into Wikipedia. Instead of the "currency" of degrees and career experience, those who have been editing for years and have dozens of badges are now the editing gatekeepers and feel they have authority to revert edits by emerging editors if they are not adding "value" in their own, single opinion, thus maintaining a hierarchy and further hypercanonizing information.

Great points from all!
While I completely agree that Transcanonisation is the ideal that should be strived for, I'm pretty confident that Hypercanonization is the future going forward. Kéyah's situation proving my point. Seeing the transfer of cultural information on the internet has made me pessimistic for its future in terms of collaboration, it seems to me that each passing day a compromise between funded archivists and the community driven platforms becomes less and less compatible. Not to mention the presence of open contribution sites like Wikipedia being much larger. I think this is largely connected to dissemination, as Wikipedia gets consistent first billing on search engines over all the other archives.

[despinaborcea]

For example, some pages are watched by more editors than others (some topics are more popular/sensitive/etc than others), meaning this increases the likelihood of post-edit corrections; in short, some pages could be more scrutinised than others, which begs the question, by whom? I think this also ties in with the question of reliability for less edited pages or excessively modified ones: the editors could be experts in the field or not. This comment is not meant to denigrate Wikipedia – it remains an accessible and informative digital tool, but more of an observation built on the agreement with Rebecca’s point- the Rodríguez-Ortega article is definitely a thought-provoking read!

Very good point Despina! I agree with you - especially where a page/genre might be monopolised by a series of editors who hold influence over how it is edited, it can certainly fit into a form of hypercanonisation. And social decanonisation too, in that, as you mention, some less edited pages are basically left to the will of whoever gets to it (which can be both good and bad depending on the aims/veracity of the editor).

Thanks to you both for your insights. This was a concern I was thinking about a few days ago when my changes were reverted -- there is already an unseen hierarchy built into Wikipedia. Instead of the "currency" of degrees and career experience, those who have been editing for years and have dozens of badges are now the editing gatekeepers and feel they have authority to revert edits by emerging editors if they are not adding "value" in their own, single opinion, thus maintaining a hierarchy and further hypercanonizing information.

I completely agree, Keyah- there is certainly a subjectivity component that should be factored in when considering vetoing edits! But I also think that verifying the background of all contributors (level of education/career background/etc) would probably have a detriment on the free nature of Wikipedia (potentially costly if checks would be done by an authorised board or by a program, for which developers would be needed). Perhaps one approach (and what, I believe, they are trying to implement) is getting as close to a balance between traditional canons and well-intended and informed 'new' contributors as possible.